I imagine there must be utilities you can download that will do it for you. We use WinXP Pro and 2000 at work and I use XP Pro at home so I've never had to do it. Thus, I can only tell you that it can be done.

Might not hurt to just poke around looking for something before you go through the trouble of reformating.

As long as they aren't encrypted you can take ownership of the folder and give yourself full access... provided you have 2000 or XP pro. XP Home makes things more difficult.

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If you boot Home in safe mode, you should have the security tab just like in Pro. I came across this on a system where I loaded a parallel copy of Windows and the old user profile folder was "access denied". I booted in safe mode, took ownership of the folder, reset all child permissions, and then had access to the files in normal mode.

If you boot Home in safe mode, you should have the security tab just like in Pro. I came across this on a system where I loaded a parallel copy of Windows and the old user profile folder was "access denied". I booted in safe mode, took ownership of the folder, reset all child permissions, and then had access to the files in normal mode.

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fucking home edition. that safe mode shit threw me too when the admin account wasn't there